


lay your mark, never your claim

by mollivanders



Category: Lost
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-22
Updated: 2010-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:12:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, Jack’s strongest memory of Juliet will be watching her dance with a stranger (back when they were both strangers).</p>
            </blockquote>





	lay your mark, never your claim

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: lay your mark, never your claim**  
>  Rating: PG-13  
> Characters: Juliet/Jack  
> Spoilers/Warnings: 6x04 'Lighthouse'  
> Summary: I kind of wanted to empower Juliet with this fic - hope that came across.  
> Disclaimer: LOST belongs to _ABC_ , I own nothing.

Years later, Jack’s strongest memory of Juliet will be watching her dance with a stranger (back when they were both strangers).

He saw her across the plaza, big band music playing cheerfully in the background, but she and her partner didn’t dance to the beat. She laughed at something the man said and spun in a circle, skirt flaring in the night.

She was so _young_. And then she met Jack.

(The first time they have sex it’s hurried and outdoors, and Jack can hear the jazz band playing in the background. The saxophone is too mournful for the moment and he shuts it out, focuses on Juliet’s fingers at his nape and the taste of her mouth in his.)

 

She doesn’t age quickly; she doesn’t age at all. He just watches as she tucks smiles in the corner of her mouth instead of laughing widely, sees her switch from tea to coffee and back to tea again, and overrules Jack when David forges Jack’s signature to get into music camp.

 _We rushed this,_ she tells him when she hands him the divorce papers and he’s too afraid not to sign them, doesn’t want to lose his whole family in the process. She moves out a week later, leaves the record player spinning on _I Dreamed a Dream_.

Jack throws the record away once she’s gone.

(He runs into her at a conference – coffee this time – and they slip off to the library, her legs slipping around his hips and the tea spilling on the floor next to his feet as he vaguely wonders how strong this bookshelf is. Her breath in his ear seems to staccato like a broken song. It cuts off without warning, pushes him over the edge.)

 

They court, this time, but on accident. She doesn’t tell David and he doesn’t tell David and David pretends not to know they show up to his music recital in the same car. He doesn’t want her to move back in and she doesn’t suggest it because this is the only way they’ve worked (separate lives, separate paths, same plan).

All the same, she invites him to be her date to a charity cotillion the hospital’s hosting and he chokes on the words. She flushes red when he takes her hand in his, but he speaks clearly. _Of course I’ll come_.

They sway softly to the music and he lets her pick the tempo, ignores the suited orchestra, twirls her in a circle and she laughs, the weight off her shoulders. He’s not sure what’s changed (if they both have), but he savors the moment. Knows she’s not his, isn’t anyone’s, but this is all there is to share.

They’ll always be strangers, just the same kind.

_Finis_


End file.
